The report ‘Reforming Legal Services: Regulation beyond the echo chambers’, published last week, is the outcome of a two-year independent review, which consulted more than 340 parties. It has been submitted to the Lord Chancellor.
It recommends a single, sector-wide regulator of all legal providers, and a single point of entry for complaints and redress mechanism for consumers and small businesses. This would include providers who are currently unregulated, as well as technology-based legal services.
Law Society president Simon Davis said: ‘In the current climate, legal services firms need more support, not the added burdens of a regulatory upheaval and uncertainty.
‘Those that will be hit hardest are the smaller firms, which would have knock-on effects for the higher proportions of BAME partners, staff and suppliers at such firms, as well as the vulnerable clients they support. Rather than diverting time and resource to analysing our regulatory frameworks, policy makers’ efforts should be directed at: funding legal aid properly to ensure that everyone, not just the well-resourced, can access justice; restoring trust in the crumbling criminal justice system; and getting the court system and the economy up and running, ensuring that well-run firms do not go under as a result of COVID-19―71% of high-street firms are currently under threat.’
Sheila Kumar, chief executive of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), said: ‘Stretching a single regulatory framework across the full range of legal services is not an obvious solution to the needs of a dynamic legal sector.’
While ‘it is widely recognised that there are regulatory gaps that create risk’, the regulatory framework needs to be flexible to ‘meet fast-moving changes such as those associated with the development of lawtech’. She highlighted the benefits of the specialist approach of the CLC ‘which allows a focus on the particular risks in conveyancing and probate, delivering consumer protection through a tailored regulatory framework’.
“Stretching a single regulatory framework across the full range of legal services is not an obvious solution to the needs of a dynamic legal sector. Our approach to having different levels of qualification, cited in the report, shows the benefit of a diversity of approaches by different regulators so allowing innovative solutions to develop.
“We continue to believe that our specialist approach is the right way to deliver consumer protection while fostering the development of innovative and vibrant conveyancing and probate businesses.”
However, other professional bodies welcomed Prof Mayson’s recommendations.
Professor Chris Bones, chair of CILEx (the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives), said: ‘Activity-based regulation is a reform that is long-overdue and CILEx is already pursuing this.
‘If you want your teeth seen to, you don’t visit a GP. Yet in legal services this generalist approach is still the basic building block of representation: at times to the detriment of consumers. Prof Mayson is also right to call out the unsustainable position of having organisations that both regulate and represent their parts of the profession.’
The report was also welcomed by Claire Green, chair of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the report ‘accurately identifies the shortcomings of the current system.
‘He notes how errors from “dabblers”, including solicitors, can lead to significant and avoidable shortfalls in costs recovery, to the detriment of lay clients. He is right to describe this as an increasingly complex and specialised area of law that requires expert handling, and says that only individually authorised Costs Lawyers should be able to conduct costs litigation and advocacy. We also strongly welcome his call to protect all legal professional titles, including that of Costs Lawyer.’
